Abstract

_TABLE OF CONTENTS:_ Foreword to the Second Edition. I. THE MAN AND HIS WRITINGS: How Augustine Came to the Episcopacy ; Augustine Chooses Eraclius as His Successor ; Augustine on His Own Writings. II. FAITH AND REASON: Belief is Volitional Consent ; To Believe Is to Think with Assent ; Believing and Understanding ; Authority and Reason ; Two Ways to Knowledge ; Reason and Authority in Manicheism ; The Relation of Authority to Reason ; If I Am Deceived, I Am Alive ; I Know that I Am Alive ; Knowledge and Wisdom ; Error and Ignorance. III. THREE LEVELS OF REALITY: Creator, Human Soul, Body ; Natures on Three Levels ; Soul, Ruled by God, Rules Its Body ; Soul: Above the Sensible, Below God ; God, Mutable Spirits, and Bodies ; Divine, Psychic and Bodily Nature ; Causality: Divine, Psychic and Bodily ; Divine Ideas as Prototypes ; God Set Spiritual Creation Above the Corporeal ; Evil: the Privation of the Good. IV. MAN’S SOUL: Existence, Life, Sense and Reason ; Sensation as an Activity of the Soul ; Memory, Understanding and Will ; The Wonders of Memory ; Three Levels of Vision. V. THE WORLD OF BODIES: All Bodily Natures Are Good ; Invisible Seeds in the Elements ; The Elements Contain Seminal Reasons ; Measure, Number, and Weight ; Concerning Formless Matter ; Place, Time and the Physical World ; The Wonders of Nature ; God Works Throughout Nature ; Man’s Natural Endowments ; The Physical World and the Christian. VI. APPROACHING GOD THROUGH UNDERSTANDING: Creation is a Great Book ; The Journey of the Soul to God ; The Soul’s Ascent to God ; The Whole World Proclaims Its Maker ; Ascending to the Supreme Truth ; Plato’s View of God ; How to Think About God ; The Problem of Speaking About God ; God Is the Selfsame ; A Divine Invocation ; Late Have I Loved Thee. VII. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS LIFE: All Men Desire Happiness ; Man’s Greatest Good ; Good Love and Bad Love ; Moral Evil Stems from Bad Will ; Two Precepts of Love ; On Diversities of Local Customs ; Doing Good to Body and Soul ; The Evil of Telling a Lie ; Lying and Concealing the Truth ; Faith, Hope and Charity ; No Virtues Apart from God ; Our Reward Is Not in This Life. VIII. DIMENSIONS OF GRACE: What the Grace of God Is ; Augustine Was Never a Pelagian ; What True Grace Is ; The Work of Grace ; How Freedom Is Restored by Grace ; God’s Foreknowledge and Human Willing ; Grace Before and After the Fall ; Grace and Good Works ; Prevenient Grace ; Grace and Human Miseries ; The Beatific Vision. IX. THE TWO CITIES: Augustine’s Analysis of the City of God ; How the Two Cities Differ ; Two Loves Make Two Cities ; Two Cities Formed by Two Loves ; The Unimportance of Externals ; Relation of the Heavenly and Earthly Cities ; Jerusalem and Babylon ; Summary of the Two Cities ; All Nations Are in the City of God ; The Church and the City of God ; The Foundation of the Holy City ; Religion and Human Destiny ; The Meaning of a People ; Peace: the Tranquility of Order ; Two Kingdoms After the Resurrection. X. PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Belief and Historical Events ; The Universality of Providence ; Meaning in History ; Six Ages in Biblical History ; Symbolic Meaning of Jewish History ; Christ in History ; The Two Cities in History ; What Is Time? ; Critique of Cyclicism. APENDIXES: I. Selected, Annotated Bibliography. II. Alphabetical List of Augustine’s Writings. III. Glossary of Terms. INDEX.